Bonjour mes amis!

It has been a very busy few days, but I finally found time to go to a park and check my e-mail and update all of you. I am in a new park (Park Monceau? Something like that), and it is really big and nice. I am sitting by a little merry-go-round and little kids keep seeing it and sprinting down the path while their parents yell "Slow down! Wait! Come back!" and it is rather amusing.

Hmm, where to start. Classes on Wednesday went well, but we were all exhausted after them. We sit in the same room for four hours (plus an hour and a half in the morning) and the professors talk and talk and it's hard to tell if any of it is particularly important and by the end everyone's eyes look glazed over and like they want to fall asleep. But it is only two days a week, and the readings themselves are interesting, so it will be fine.

After class we walked around the neighborhood of our school a bit and found the government buildings and French version of the White House and several beautiful fountains...it's amazing how much beautiful architecture comes out of nowhere and reminds you you're in Paris. Last night when I was looking at my Paris guidebook I was skimming through the "Historic Paris Walking Tour" and all of the monuments were right by my school...the fountain I've sat next to for lunch twice, Eglise Germain-dès-Pres , Notre Dame...In fact I had lunch at a café on Wednesday and after we sat down I looked up and there was Notre Dame, right down the street! I'm planning on going inside and touring it during my three hour lunch break on Thursday. Because that is what you do when you are in Paris.

So after we walked around a bit we found a metro home and then had dinner. It was just Ingrid, Jean Claude, Kathy, and me so we both spoke a lot more french (as opposed to the past few days when we had been doing more listening) and we talked about our classes, books, the economy, travel, why the sujonctif is a stupid tense, and several other things I'm sure. And we had pork I think. And delicious vegetables.

Then after dinner Kathy and I met up with about half our group on Pont Neuf, a viewpoint in the middle of the Seine and hung out for an hour or two. And it was lovely, and we talked to some other young french people, who were interesting. Everyone in our group seems very nice and while everyone wants to do different things, they are very open about inviting everybody and aren't upset if you come or not. So that seems to be going well.

Yesterday was field trip day, so we met at 1:45 at Opéra Garnier. Before that, I walked around my neighborhood a bit. I live about two blocks from Moulin Rouge, so it was a cool walk, but also one I had been waiting for daylight to take. I wandered around for about an hour and then took the metro to the Opéra.

I'm getting much better at the metro - we have monthly passes so we hop on and off whenever we want, and everyone in the program is mastering their transfers and getting places efficiently, which is great.

We took a 1.5 hour tour of l'Opéra with an amazing tour guide named Rita. She spoke great English but also practically acted everything out, which was quite entertaining. The building was beautiful and I took some pictures and enjoyed all the details inside.

Then we went on a tour of les Passages of Paris, which are basically streets of shops with a glass roof over the top that were more-or-less the precursor to malls. They were interesting, but we finished our Opéra tour at about 3:30 and didn't have a dinner tour until 6:30, so after three hours we had all had enough of les Passages and wanted to sit down.

We ate dinner at Resaurant Chartier, which was fun. We went early though, which meant it was pretty much exclusively tourists inside. I ate duck paté, and that is gross. More in the way it looks and what it is than how it actually tastes, but still. And then we had lamb and french fries. And for dessert they brought out what looked like vanilla ice cream and lots of hot fudge, but then it turned out that the fudge was actually prunes! So that was very weird. And it was actually very sweet and tasted alright, but it was very confusing when we were expecting chocolate. My table was a table of four people: the literary theory professor and two girls I hadn't talked to very much (although one of them is 38, so she probably doesn't count as a "girl"). And that was interesting and our waiter was very nice.

After dinner I took the metro home (and Kathy left for Berlin for the weekend!) and then I fell asleep on my bed for an hour because I was very tired. And when I woke up around 11:30 there were still lots of people in the kitchen and it was Ingrid's daughters and their husbands, so I talked to them for awhile (until like 2AM), and it was very fun and I learned a bunch of new words.

Today I met with two people from the program (Mira and Justina) and we went to Sacre Coeur, which is only one metro stop from my apartment. There was a nice view of Paris from the top, but it was a little hazy out, so we couldn't see every detail. It is actually a beautiful day today..sunny and relatively warm and dry and with leaves changing colors all over, but we still couldn't see very much. Then we went inside the church, which was beautiful. There was a service going on, so I was very surprised they let people inside, but everyone was very respectful and we listened to a bit of the service before we left. Then we walked around Montmartre for an hour or so before I showed Mira and Justina Moulin Rouge and my neighborhood.

Then we got on the metro and got off at a random stop (Stalingrad, if I remember right) and walked around until we found a place for lunch. We went to a café and I had couscous poulet (chicken couscous) which was delicious and a ton of food. We sat outside and while the view wasn't particularly interesting, the weather and food were great and the waiter was very nice and said our French was great, which is always appreciated. We stayed there awhile and then Justina headed home and Mira and I went to Péres Lachaise cemetery.

We saw the graves of Jim Morrison, Chopin, Proust, and Oscar Wilde along with a million graves of people who aren't famous. And it was actually really pretty with all the old tombstones and monuments combined with the colorful leaves and blue sky.

And then I went home! And then I went to this park, which is still lovely. And that is life as I know it.

But overall, I'm having an amazing time and doing a million things a day. It's amazing seeing monuments you have heard about all your life pop out of nowhere as you are going about your other business and at least three times a day it hits me all over again that I really am in Paris! I miss you all and I hope to hear lots from you all. Thanks for all your comments (yours worked Grandpa, good job!) and I will talk to you more soon!

Also, in the world of letter writing, you might want to address them:

Elizabeth Hiskey

Chez Ingrid Berger

Address...

Because otherwise they will get to the apartment building, but I'm not entirely sure if they will make it to my door. Hopefully. And if you already sent me a letter (which makes you amazing), we will see if it works. But I am worried about my absentee ballot arriving...

Also, I took more pictures, but I haven't uploaded them yet and I don't have my camera cord in the park. So you will have to wait until next time. This is how I'm going to keep you coming back and reading my next entry ;-)